Wash the ham clean; soak it in pump water for an hour; dry it well, and rub into it the following composition: saltpetre two ounces, bay salt nine ounces, common salt four ounces, lump sugar three ounces; but first beat them separately into a fine powder; mix them together, dry them before the fire, and then rub them into the ham, as hot as the hand can bear it. Then lay the ham sloping on a table; put on it a board with forty or fifty pounds weight; let it remain thus for five days; then turn it, and, if any of the salt is about it, rub it in, and let it remain with the board and weight on it for five days more; this done rub off the salt, &c. When you intend to smoke it, hang the ham in a sugar hogshead, over a chaffing-dish of wood embers; throw on it a handful of juniper-berries, and over that some horse-dung, and cover the cask with a blanket. This may be repeated two or three times the same day, and the ham may be taken out of the hogshead the next morning. The quantity of salt here specified is for a middle sized ham. There should not be a hole cut in the leg, as is customary, to hang it up by, nor should it be soaked in brine. Hams thus cured will keep for three months without smoking, so that the whole quantity for the year may be smoked at the same time. The ham need not be soaked in water before it is used, but only washed clean. Instead of a chaffing-dish of coals to smoke the hams, make a hole in the ground, and therein put the fire; it must not be fierce: be sure to keep the mouth of the hogshead covered with a blanket to retain the smoke.
Westphalia Ham, to cure. No. 1.
Cut a leg of pork to the shape of a Westphalia ham; salt it, and set it on the fire in a skillet till dry, and put to it two ounces of saltpetre finely beaten. The salt must be put on as hot as possible. Let it remain a week in the salt, and then hang it up in the chimney for three weeks or a month. Two ounces of saltpetre will be sufficient for the quantity of salt required for one ham.
Westphalia Ham, to cure. No. 2.
Let the hams be very well pricked with a skewer on the wrong side, hanging them in an airy place as long as they will keep sweet, and with a gallon of saltpetre make a pickle, and keep stirring it till it will bear an egg; boil and skim it and put three pounds of brown sugar to it. Let the hams lie about a month in this pickle, which must be cold when they are put in; turn them every day; dry them with saw-dust and charcoal. The above is the quantity that will do for six hams.
Westphalia Ham, to cure. No. 3.
Rub every ham with four ounces of saltpetre. Next day put bay salt, common salt, and coarse sugar, half a pound of each, into a quart of stale strong beer, adding a small quantity of each of these ingredients for every ham to be made at that time. Boil this pickle, and pour it boiling hot over every ham. Let them lie a fortnight in it, rubbing them well and turning them twice a day. Then smoke the ham for three days and three nights over a fire of saw-dust and horse-litter, fresh made from the stable every night; after which smoke them for a fortnight over a wood fire like other bacon.
Westphalia Ham, to cure. No. 4.
For two hams the following proportions may be observed: wash your hams all over with vinegar, and hang them up for two or three days. Take one pound and a half of the brownest sugar, two ounces of saltpetre, two ounces of bay salt, and a quart of common salt; mix them together; heat them before the fire as hot as you can bear your hand in, and rub it well into the hams before the fire, till they are very tender. Lay them in a tub made long for that purpose, or a butcher’s tray, that will hold them both, one laid one way and the other the contrary way, and strew the remainder of the ingredients over them. When the salt begins to melt, add a pint of vinegar, and let them lie three weeks, washing them with the liquor and turning them every day. Dry them in saw-dust smoke; hang them in a cellar; and if they mould it will do them no harm, as these hams require damp and not extreme driness. Juniper-berries thrown into the fire at which they are smoked greatly improve their flavour.